A sect. Spouses Paolo Neri and Stefania Platania, 67 and 65, found dead Saturday evening in their home in Santa Sofia, a hamlet of Spinello, in the province of Forlì, would have been part of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment. The couple would have killed themselves at the same time, shooting himself. Next to their bodies were two guns and a note to explain to their children the reasons for their gesture, aimed at “Find a better place”. In the village, however, many argue that there is no link between the sect and suicide, and that the couple had long since stopped following Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment.
About ten years ago the two, former employees of the Senate, now retired, had bought a second home (in addition to the one they had in Rome) in the small hamlet on the Apennines, as other followers of the sect had done, and they had to build a bunker in the house.
But which sect is it? Established in 1987, Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment was founded by Judith Darlene “JZ” Knight, born in 1946, a housewife from Tacoma, Washington, who in 1977 had a meeting with a spiritual entity that has identified itself as Ramtha the Enlightened One, warrior of 35 thousand years ago. Shortly thereafter Knight began to give voice (he practiced so-called “channeling”) to Ramtha and in the 1980s became one of the most popular “channelers” New Age: fell into a trance state and awakened to speak to the audience in a slightly different voice, bringing the alleged warrior messages to the audience.
Ramtha, contemplating the nature of the universe, would find enlightenment and ascend from his mortal existence. Speaking through Knight, he addresses his followers as “masters” and recalls their ability to be creative and divine.
Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment teaches a form of Gnostic esotericism that sees individuals as divine beings who have been trapped in this world by oblivion and proposes a series of spiritual practices to help adepts remember and re-achieve their divine state. In the late 1980s, the practice of channeling came under severe criticism and the New Age movement distanced itself from it.
Knight has also been heavily criticized: his school was said to have turned the Ramtha movement into a brainwashing cult, which pushed members into strange and even dangerous practices.
Source: Vanity Fair
